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[larry_357]

WASHINGTON – There are two sides to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: a Latina from a blue-collar family and a wealthy member of America's power elite.

The White House portrays Sotomayor as a living image of the American dream, though its telling of the rags-to-riches story emphasizes the rags, a more politically appealing narrative, and plays down the riches.

Branding a complex person in a simplistic way can backfire in the highly charged environment surrounding her coming Senate hearing.

Discussions about Sotomayor and her ethnicity, gender and tax bracket carry risks for supporters and detractors. Unartful criticism by Republicans risks offending voters they'd like to win. Democrats, likewise, need to be cautious about how they conduct the debate in a nation uncomfortable talking about matters of race and gender.

On ethnicity, Sotomayor herself has recognized — and contributed to — the dichotomy. She proudly highlights her Puerto Rican roots but hasn't always liked it when others have. She once took issue with a prospective employer who singled her out as a Latina with questions she viewed as offensive yet has shown a keen ethnic consciousness herself.

In a California speech in 2001 now under renewed scrutiny, she remarked that, on a court, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

In that same speech, "A Latina Judge's Voice," Sotomayor drew attention to cultural differences between Mexican-Americans and Puerto Rican-Americans, and she narrowed her ethnicity beyond American, Hispanic and Puerto Rican to "Newyorkrican."

"For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War II," she explained.

Yet years ago, during a recruiting dinner in law school at Yale, Sotomayor objected when a law firm partner asked whether she would have been admitted to the school if she weren't Puerto Rican, and whether law firms did a disservice by hiring minority students the firms know are unqualified and will ultimately be fired.

Afterward, Sotomayor confronted the partner about the questions, rejected his insistence that he meant no harm and turned down his invitation for further job interviews. She filed a discrimination complaint against the firm with the university, which could have barred the firm from recruiting on campus. She won a formal apology from the firm.

In speeches, Sotomayor has harkened back to her and her brother's beginnings in a poor Bronx neighborhood, roots that President Barack Obama highlighted in introducing her this week.

"Born in the South Bronx, she was raised in a housing project," Obama said. "And even as she has accomplished so much in her life, she has never forgotten where she began, never lost touch with the community that supported her."

Yet Sotomayor did not live her entire childhood in a housing project in the South Bronx — she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-class neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and then Yale.

And Sotomayor's life and lifestyle after law school largely resemble the background of many lawyers who rise to powerful positions in Washington.

She climbed her way up through New York's Democratic power structure boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years — Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. That's the access of a partner in a corporate law firm, not a kid from the South Bronx.

She now earns more than $200,000 a year and owns a condominium in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood of million-dollar-plus homes. Her brother, Dr. Juan Sotomayor, is a physician in North Syracuse, N.Y., whose practice doesn't accept Medicaid or Medicare — programs for the poor and elderly — according to its Web site.

Her ethnic consciousness was apparent in the earliest days of her career, in the New York City prosecutor's office.

"What I am finding, both statistically and emotionally, is that the worst victims of crimes are not general society — i.e., white folks — but minorities themselves," she told The New York Times in 1983. "The violence, the sorrow are perpetrated by minorities on minorities."

The "riches" part of Sotomayor's rags-to-riches story began when she left her low-paying job in that prosecutor's office and joined the Pavia & Harcourt law firm. Her clients included Fendi, maker of luxury purses that she was unlikely to have seen as a child in the Bronx.

Still, she kept her hand in the Puerto Rican community — possibly to the point of a conflict of interest.

She served simultaneously on New York's campaign finance board and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an advocacy group that took legal action in 1991 to fight what it considered discriminatory redistricting. Sotomayor didn't recuse herself from a finance board discussion of the redistricting battle, despite the involvement of her own advocacy group.

Also during this time, Sotomayor served on the state board that makes mortgages available to low- and middle-income New Yorkers. She missed nearly a third of the board's meetings during three of those years but apparently still left a mark. Cuomo said Sotomayor's respect for the law, her "life story" and her integrity were deciding factors in his decision to name her to the agency.

And when she left in 1992, the agency's board adopted a resolution praising her for defending "the rights and needs of the disadvantaged to attain, maintain, and secure affordable housing appropriate to their need." It went on: "Ms. Sotomayor also served as the conscience of the Board concerning the negative effects of gentrification which can harm communities and create hopelessness and homelessness if individuals and families are displaced."

Republicans are scrutinizing her full record and background, but carefully. The White House warned as much earlier this week.

"It is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

With Hispanics a growing voting bloc, and ethnic sensitivities high, few are willing to be as blunt as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said of her comment that a Latina woman would rule more wisely than a white man: "New racism is no better than old racism."

___

Associated Press writers Cal Woodward in Washington, Sara Kugler in New York and Jessica M. Pasko in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.
 Interesting read

[POGOGOLF]

WASHINGTON –...she spent most of her teenage years in a middle-clCranberries neighborhood, attending private school and winning scholarships to Princeton and then Yale.

  

[Lucky]

Hmmm...Pogo my computer still shows the original "middle class neighborhood" not the cranberry version you apparently see...wonder why?

[SouthernXer]

Well Mexico is trying to take Texas back one crossing at a time. Now they have friends in high places. 

Thats ignorant since she isn't Mexican which is what your inferring.

Mexican or not...

http://www.stoptheaclu.com/2009/05/28/sotomayor-la-raza-member/

 

All that info is bs, La raza started out as civil rights for Hispanics.  I'm shocked you would read that link above and eat it up as served.  Its completely false.  All the accusations about her supposed racism stems from that one comment she made in that speech.  It makes perfect sense just stated incorrectly.  I'm probably wasting my time from looking at the posts here.  I'm just a little taken back by what I see.  Although I will reserve judgement, It feels like I might as well be back in North Carolina, where my wife's car was trashed because she was white and I was Puerto Rican.

Just an FYI, La Raza does not advocate cessation which I dont see what the big deal is since the TX governor keeps mentioning it and you guys applaud.

I didn't mean to offend you, Brother.    As a Puerto Rican, I can imagine that you'd not only be proud of her but also support her as a nominee of the SCOTUS.  Nothing against, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Irishmen, or Pollocks but I have to say I have everything against extreme judges who rule on a whim and not from what our founding fathers created in the Constitution.  Call me an Originalist, if you will.  

La Raza may very well be BS.  However, there are a lot of Left Wing Radicals that follow them, support them, and are encouraged by them.  Hell, La Raza has a ton of influence over one of Americas largest newspapers today.  They are radical bullies in my opinion, much like the race baiters such as Sharpton, Jackson, Quanell XYZ, and the latest is Wright.

The pubs have two months to pick her apart just like Barry did Bush's appointees.  We'll see who she is hopefully, after they beat the dust off of her.

On a positive note, I believe she may be pro life.  

[WILD E]

•   If you held a job and people were questioning your qualifications, and all you had to do to put an end to those questions, not to mention more than a dozen lawsuits filed against you, was to produce a valid birth certificate you claimed to possess, would you refuse to take that simple step? Or would you, as Obama has done, spend at least $1 million to fight the lawsuits? I think most people would agree that someone who chose the latter is either crazy or doesn't have a valid birth certificate.
•   Let's say you got a job in which you succeeded someone with whom you disagreed passionately.Would you try to have that person prosecuted over those differences, knowing that some day, someone with whom you disagree would succeed you and possibly contemplate the same course of action? That's what Obama talked about doing in the case of his disagreement with George W. Bush over the practice of coercive interrogations – policies, I might point out, that were employed not just by his immediate predecessor, but by every war-time president in the history of the United States.
•   Or what do you make of Obama's efforts to ban the use of the words "terror" and "terrorism" from his administration's lexicon? The administration prefers to call attacks on terrorists "overseas contingency operations." And terrorist attacks at home are referred to as "man-caused disasters." These new terms are apparently considered less offensive to terrorists.
•   While there are hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens voluntarily serving in arms overseas, the Obama administration put out a report to law enforcement agencies throughout the country to be wary of returning veterans, because they might be more inclined to get involved in "right-wing extremist" activities.
•   Obama presides – legitimately or illegitimately – over a nation founded on the ideals of "independence" and "national sovereignty." Yet, in a speech given in Prague, what was his prescription for making the world a better place? "All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime," he said.
•   How about his solution to an economic crisis spurred by too much indebtedness? More debt.
•   Let's say you're the first black president. Do you appoint a black attorney general who indicts the people who just elected you as a "nation of cowards" on matters of race?
•   Imagine appointing to a top policy position at the Defense Department, a columnist from the Los Angeles Times who believes U.S. policies were to blame for the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida. That would be Rosa Brooks, who also previously referred to Obama's immediate predecessor as "our torturer in chief " and a "psychotic who need(s) treatment" while comparing Bush's arguments for waging a war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's use of political propaganda.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
I don't know if any of these actions mean the president is crazy. But I do know they mean he is dangerous to the security and prosperity of the nation.

[RocknRoll]

HHMMMMM!  So Sotomayor is a shining example of what happens when Government raises a kid.  Housing projects, welfare, quota scholarships to school, hiring quotas for rich silk stocking law firms, government job as a judge - cradle to grave government raised.

Interesting that when her brother's wallet is on the line, the poor go out the window!

 

[POGOGOLF]

One of her judicial findings (a Second Amendment case) will be coming before SCOTUS soon -- if appointed, she will be issuing a finding on her own finding. Isn't that special......................

I gotta believe they'll never let her in the room on that one...IF she passes muster in the first place.

[POGOGOLF]

No need to be offended, the whole point of this thread is the nomination is important to everyone in America, and the judges should be unbiased in decisions made, I am not satisfied that this is the case here. The fact is if anyone else being nominated would have made the statements she made they would have already been shut down. I don’t want a nominee to judge by feelings as Obama stated – I want sound thought out decisions – how will decisions made affect the population, not certain groups or how one feels about the subject matter.
We all have the rights I just want to be sure going forward we ALL still have rights. I do not think she is the right nominee, I also think she will get through to the Supreme Court. With that said I hope I am wrong about her ability to make fair judgment.

+1...no one here has said nor implied anything about any group/sect/race/religious affiliation/national origin, I, personally, think THIS particular individual (Ms. Sotomayor) nominated by THAT particular individual (the chosen one) would not be good for my/our/this country based on what I now know about her. Gumbo is absolutely correct, if you are gonna jump into the political arena, you best don your asbestos gear or you'll get burnt badly. JMHO.